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Anyway I thought the Donphan battle isn't as bad as people are making it out to be. Donphan was pretty cool and we should just be happy he was used in the battle rather than complaining about how much time he got or the order he was used. This is the first frontier battle to have Pikachu and everyones complaining because it was against Milotic? Before the preview came out everyone was going to flip a lid if Lucy didn't have Seviper, her signature pokemon, and another of her game pokemon. Yet she had both! And we just complain about something else. IMO, not having the game pokemon is much worse than a battle that didn't live up to everyone's superior standards. It's so easy to say the writers are stupid, on drugs, and insane. But maybe we're all the ones that are crazy and cant appreciate the episodes.

Now...with Lucy and her blushing...it makes me think that Brock may not a be a flirt guy anymore...a CHARACTER CHANGE for LOVE...

is that possible? lol

hmmm...well besides that...so many girls..in the ep, and they were all drawn well..lol...(lol...i mean good looking)...but Lucy looks perfect...she comes close to Flannery...only negative thing in her is...that her face ain't that attractive...lol

anyway..the battle was good..., Seviper vs Seviper i expected more out of it...lol

Anyway I thought the Donphan battle isn't as bad as people are making it out to be. Donphan was pretty cool and we should just be happy he was used in the battle rather than complaining about how much time he got or the order he was used. This is the first frontier battle to have Pikachu and everyones complaining because it was against Milotic? Before the preview came out everyone was going to flip a lid if Lucy didn't have Seviper, her signature pokemon, and another of her game pokemon. Yet she had both! And we just complain about something else. IMO, not having the game pokemon is much worse than a battle that didn't live up to everyone's superior standards. It's so easy to say the writers are stupid, on drugs, and insane. But maybe we're all the ones that are crazy and cant appreciate the episodes.

Rant complete.

The thing is though, for pretty much the entire first half of the episode, almost anything remotely linking to Lucy had something to do with Seviper. The outfit, the pinwheel, the 'tube' itself. Don't you think its rather awkward to then have a Milotic take center stage instead of the signature pok&#233;mon that has just been shoved in our faces for at least ten minutes? Especially since, as I already stated, we've seen a Pikachu vs. Milotic match-up before. There was pretty much zero originallity in the fight, bar the single use of Facade and Ash's creative Volt Tackle strategy.
Thats why the episode SHOULD have focused on Donphan and Seviper. Because its something we haven't seen before. And thats why people are complaining. I don't see how finding something unoriginal and boring substituting for something that had some real potential isn't a justified reason to be dissapointed.

People appreciate the episodes when they're actually any good. Which is why everyone enjoyed the Tucker and Greta facillities. When they suck, people complain. And this one sucked, because the fact of the matter is, it was rushed.

Definelty have to agree with Gravy this episode was rushed, It should've been a two parter. The battle should've started with pikachu vs. Milotic first, which should've ended in a draw and then an all out battle with seviper and donphan with donphan taking the glory. And as we were discussing in the speculation thread of this episode, pikachu still has quick attack so V Faction was right. But no Earthquake from Donphan, i was really disappoint to see takedown, and rollout consecutively, and one hyper beam attack. Seviper only used poison tail and Flamethower, the battle was just to rushed.

Pikachu vs. Milotic was handled fine it was nice the way ash used volt tackle with twister.

just saw the pictures.
man. >_<. if they gave the personality from the manga/game ash and co. would be running for their lives, not seeing some obvious fake Lucy blushing and stuff. that battle was: okay. at least the anime has room for more strategy. i liked the volt-tackle twister with pikachu. didn't he do thunderbolt twister during Juan's battle? i wish the anime pokemon had potential like their game counterparts. oh well. WHY did max pull brock away? maybe he's afraid that lucy will kick them out for flirting... ah, well, we can't have frontier brains falling in love. i think that lucy was just flattered, that's all. remember that episode where some girl fell in love with Brock?

anyway, sorry for my flaming, but that's just how i feel.

Luckshipping sounds good.

You never were there....but you never were here, either... This the Prince Manaphy, my bishie. *hugs*
Thanks to Coronis for the Manaphy sprite and ~*SeijisSeviper*~ for the Anti-Manaphy!

Gravy, I can appreciate the problem you had with the non originality of Pikachu vs. Milotic. But just because we've seen it before doesn't mean it shouldn't happen again. Milotic is a pokemon that Lucy has in the games. It is a completely viable pokemon for her to choose. It is water type with an extremely high special defense. As far as I see, Pikachu and its new volt tackle was Ash's best bet against it. This is a frontier brain he should be doing the best he can, and to him that was Pikachu. Seviper was her lead pokemon and Donphan just did great against it. Also, we can agree that Ash's strategy with volt tackle and Milotics use of facade were entertaining strategies.

One more thing, IIRC people had big problems with the Tucker episodes. As for the Greta ep, people were a little more mild about it.

As far as a ship name is concerned, ships are usually named after the most obvious or prominent thing having to do with the two characters. So since they met in Lucy's Battle Tube/Pike, I suggest naming it both TubeShipping and PikeShipping. The names could be used interchangably.

You know, I hate Brock x Lucy simply on the principal that it's one of those pairings that has hints in one episode, but will never amount to anything. Lucy probably won't appear again, let's face it. But it'll probably be fawned over here like it's the greatest thing ever to hit Pokemon, and another pairing for certain shippers to use to use to keep a character away from a few certain characters. (Tracey dumped with Daisy, May dumped with Shuu, Brock dumped with Lucy, etc. etc.) That may sound a little mean, but after not being paid for the 4th week in a row, I really couldn't care about being rational.

I'm glad that someone feels the same was as I do (ok, I don't hate the ship, but I don't support it either)

Don't me wrong, I can see that Lucy blushed (at least with the pictures anyway, I have yet to see the episode) , But, I just don't see it going any further than that..

As far as a ship name is concerned, ships are usually named after the most obvious or prominent thing having to do with the two characters. So since they met in Lucy's Battle Tube/Pike, I suggest naming it both TubeShipping and PikeShipping. The names could be used interchangably.

I suggested that that perhaps should be saved for Ash x Lucy, since it's something the two share in common, (They battle in the pike. Brock is there too, but he's just... watching.) and to be honest, is rather vague. Something to do with Brock and Lucy's actual common interests or Lucy's 'crush' on Brock would be ideal: See the thread in the Shippers Forum for thoughts of this matter.

Giving it two names... normally, I wouldn't really be bothered, but the shipping name situation is rather strained at the moment: There's a huge outcry for original names as more and more names are being taken up. Best to stick to one imo.

Yes, Alfonso, but there is sort of another precedent set even with the name PokeShipping. It was named such because (at least at the time) it was the most obvious/prominent ship in Pokemon, despite the semi-vagueness of the name as relating particularly to Ash and Misty's relationship. The same reasoning is used with many other ship names. And since the most obvious ship in the Battle Pike/Tube is Brock/Lucy, I still say it should be called PikeShipping/TubeShipping.

Yes, Alfonso, but there is sort of another precedent set even with the name PokeShipping. It was named such because (at least at the time) it was the most obvious ship in Pokemon. The same reasoning is used with many other ship names. And since the most obvious ship in the Battle Pike/Tube is Brock/Lucy, I still say it should be called PikeShipping/TubeShipping.

Indeed.

However, in hindsight, I'm sure a few people could say that Pokeshipping was a bad choice of name considering it's utter vagueness, and may I say, unoriginality.

Interesting episode. Although not quite up to her game counterpart, I thought they handled Azami well enough. They even gave her some cute, and rather useless lackeys too. Particularly the blue haired one. Though they've got nothing on Erika's gym employees if I do say so. ;0

...Moving right along - I rather liked how Azami was secretly crushing on Takeshi but trying to hide it and keep her cool. Not to say I'm in support of this new ship, but the way it was done was original and quite a welcome change from the usual routine as far as I'm concerned. And it gave Azami a bit of extra character development as well.

As for the battle, I pretty much agree with everyone else. Habunake vs Donphan should have been saved for last, as it had much more potential than the second half of the battle. Mirokarosu vs Pikachu was too long, to predictable, and too already done in AG 112. :/

The Rocket-dan were meh... certainly not as much action as I had expected from Musashi. Habunake vs Habunake was really short and not very remarkable in any way.

Enishida made me lol when he just randomly walked around from the side of the Pokémon center. Like he had been hiding in those bushes or something. If ever there was a doubt that he's stalking Satoshi-tachi, 'tis no longer.

With all the hate "Lovely Boy" received last year, I'm rather surprised nobody mentioned that the lyric-less version was used. As always, I enjoyed the old school instrumentals they threw in there - especially the one at the very end. The last scene instantly reminded me of episode 19, which also leaves off with the crew sailing on a ship by the sunset.

Gravy, I can appreciate the problem you had with the non originality of Pikachu vs. Milotic. But just because we've seen it before doesn't mean it shouldn't happen again.

I disagree. Its just not good writing to feed us essentially the exact same battle in favour of overlooking any chance of providing some sort of originallity in the show. Its just not entertaining in the slightest.
Infact, why even have Milotic vs. Pikachu in there at all. This episode would have benefitted a whole lot more if it had been a one on one scuffle against Seviper and Donphan. We'd see two pok&#233;mon who are long overdue for some decent battle screentime kicking butt with no interuptions. I personally think that would have been a much better set-up to give us a decent first look at Donphan's prowess, amongst other things.

Milotic is a pokemon that Lucy has in the games. It is a completely viable pokemon for her to choose.

I agree with that, but in no way should it have been treated as her strongest pok&#233;mon. A significant threat perhaps, but definatly not her strongest.

It is water type with an extremely high special defense. As far as I see, Pikachu and its new volt tackle was Ash's best bet against it. This is a frontier brain he should be doing the best he can, and to him that was Pikachu. Seviper was her lead pokemon and Donphan just did great against it. Also, we can agree that Ash's strategy with volt tackle and Milotics use of facade were entertaining strategies.

Well, if their intention was to show of Pikachu's Volt Tackle so much, they should have just left it for another Battle Facillity as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather see more of a pok&#233;mon thats more than likely just going to be dumped off anyway as opposed to one thats going to be in the show until it comes to an end.
Though, I do agree that facade and Volt Tackle where pretty neat, the bad outweighs the good imo :P

Originally Posted by PDL

am I the only one who would think it would be cool if Ash decided to teach Donphan Facade?

No...you're not.

Edit: Oh, and Heracross, I personally liked the lyricless version of Lovely Boy :P

Sure, it's better than the same old Iron Tail/Thunderbolt, but it's in like... EVERY EPISODE. Should be a finisher, in my opinion. Or something with actual negative results: Pikachu actually being hurt after using it.

Actually, I think it was actually brought up in this episode. Inishida was impressed that Pikachu's capable of using Volt Tackle, and he makes mention of the recoil damage it receives.

Anyway, I know I'm probably gonna get a lot of "Takeshi leaving for a girl? Now where have we seen that before?"s, but... this seems as good as opportunity as any. I'm sure several of us can agree, the guy really should go by the time the Diamond/Pearl saga starts, and is it any coincidence that they're having a very popular Frontier Brain be the one girl who so happens to be falling for him (which, BTW, may leave hope for all the Azami fanboys that she'll appear again)?

Other than that, nothing I can say that hasn't been said before already... Seviper should've taken out Pikachu and then go on to fight Donphan as the main focus. The fact that Azami's signature Pokemon (who's a snake, a type of creature I really like) could take out nothing but Rocket Dan, and that even a well-trained Habunake gets the shaft, makes me weep T_T. Come on, how friggin hard could that have been? Reverse the order of the matches, have Habunake pwn Pikachu by slamming a Poison Tail when it's tired from battling Mirokarosu as opposed to Mirokarosu taking out Donphan. As Gravy mentioned, it certainly would've fitted the showcasing we got for the first ten minutes much better (I guess this isn't the first time that's happened... Senri's Yarukimono, Nagi's Airmudo that didn't even battle, Tsutsuji's Ishitsubute, and even though it battled last, Matsuba's Gengar seemed to do a helluva lot less than his Ghost).

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention.... someone already brought up Eievui being added to the opening in that forest scene. Oddly enough, Donphan still hasn't been inserted into there.

Last edited by Yamato-san; 7th January 2006 at 3:39 PM.

Yup, classes again. I'm gonna be at this for a while.

I translate for #Pocketmonsters (just because I know Japanese does not make me Japanese, stop PMing me).

The battle was rushed and some movements looked very odd with the animation,like seviper jumping away from donphan&#180;s attack in one scene.

Pikachu against milotic was predictable and I think I like the milotic battle against Adan more. Pikachu winning because of this damn volt tackle..boooring. It&#180;s the same with charizard and seismic toss, I hope it will stop sooner or later.

Btw, shouldn&#180;t pikachu be pushed away by milotic&#180;s [edit]twister (thanks Kthleen ) instead of getting nearer to it before its final attack? It wasn&#180;t in volt tackle mode at that time.
Facade was I suprise

The brock substory was nice and brock got finally more screentime ^^ and that without bonsly. I liked how Lucy had a crush on brock because of his eyes. Slitshipping? maybe... *cough* The writers hate brock..giving him a crying little wannabe bonsai who needs a bottle and giving him an ear pulling nemisis like max ( who I like in almost every episode...his behaviour was just unneceassary this time).

No running evee in the intro with may&#180;s other pokemon but having it sitting in the forest scene is okay for me. I think donphan was too big to fit into the forest scene...

I think avoiding any spoilers for a episode and stop watching the episodes before the preview ,something I do since the Dragonir&#180;s Lake episode, makes me like even medicore episodes a bit more. I don&#180;t know why.

With all the hate "Lovely Boy" received last year, I'm rather surprised nobody mentioned that the lyric-less version was used.

Well, I just got around to watching the episode, when I heard this silly music that I wasn't really liking. Then I recognized it. (The beginning, before the xylophone was added, was actually rather nice, but after that, ugh.)
Not too fond of "PSM," either.

Eh, everyone's said everything already: perhaps should have been two episodes; what the hell was Satoshi thinking; poor Takeshi/*kicks Masato*. I'm glad Azami didn't turn out as creepy as I made her out to be, and it was kind of funny to see Takeshi cheering for her during the battle.

Originally Posted by Yamato-san

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention.... someone already brought up Eievui being added to the opening in that forest scene. Oddly enough, Donphan still hasn't been inserted into there.

I wonder if that's because Gomazou wasn't in the scene, so they had no ability to replace it with Donphan and thus no real reason to insert it there. (Usohachi isn't there, either.) They needed to put Eievui somewhere, and just decided that that was the best place. Though why they didn't put it further down, I don't know. Maybe it was conversing with Pikachu before Pikachu fell asleep?

Originally Posted by TeddiUrsa

Btw, shouldn&#180;t pikachu be pushed away by milotic&#180;s twister/whirpool ( don&#180;t know what it was ^^; ) instead of getting nearer to it before its final attack?

Tatsumaki is Twister. And yes, it should have, but you know how things work in Pok&#233;mon....

4Kids will more than likely, if not certainly continue to dub the episodes for Pokemon. Sure, some of the money they get from the merchandising rights are gone, but it's still a damn popular show of theirs. Nintendo is not about to start dubbing Pokemon themselves: It's just too much hassle.

i just saw the episode, and barely caught the snippets of the conversations with my broken japanese...

i thought the whole lucy and brock thing was cute, even if he is a dog and chases anything with a skirt...

i normally watch the gym battle episodes only, and i enjoyed this one. i would have thought that ash would have called back donphan atleast, but it was a lil shameful it got defeatd so easily. i will never understand how pikachu is sometimes played down, even though he has been with ash for 8-9 seasons.

i agree, the whole team rocket and tent thing was a lil amusing, but crappy.